The Best of Mike’S Meandering Mind
The Best of Mike’S Meandering Mind

Author: Mike Holst

Publisher: iUniverse

Published: 2017-05-15

Total Pages: 155

ISBN-13: 1532024088

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In August of 2007, I started writing a weekly column for my hometown newspaper, the Northland Press. This book is a collection of those essays published over the years. They depict everything from life itself to my roots; nature, pet stories, holidays of the year, fishing, hunting, sports, eulogies, and memories of days gone by. I hope you enjoy reading them as much as I enjoyed writing them. Mike Holst

Mama's Boy
Mama's Boy

Author: Peter G. Clark

Publisher: Outskirts Press

Published: 2024-04-24

Total Pages: 543

ISBN-13: 1977274412

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This novel, "Mama's Boy," is about a pathologically shy, pigeon-toed boy, Peter Macaulay, who everybody, including his parents, considers mentally retarded and incredibly awkward physically. He has no friends and relates only to his mother, Elizabeth, even though when drunk she abuses him verbally and often slaps him. On the eve of high school, a gifted teacher and tutor, Ellen Marie Gaffney, is brought into Peter's life by his father, Jack, who is embarrassed by his son known at school as "The Geek." Jack hopes Miss Gaffney can prepare Peter academically for high school. The father also bribes the school principal with a $10,000 check to have Peter placed on the all-black basketball team. Two blacks, Fred "Sweetie" Davis and James "Big Daddy" Winkfield, take Peter under their wings, although other blacks bully him physically and verbally, often threatening his life. The female protagonist of the novel, 21-year-old Nora Quindt, a senior at the University of California at Berkeley, becomes Peter's second tutor, and through her growing emotional attachment to this 16-year-old "child" becomes part of the black basketball world of Castlemont High School in Oakland, California. The overall theme of this novel revolves around black-white relations in America. The author, Peter Clark, went to Castlemont, an inner-city school that was 60 percent black in 1958-1961, and was personal friends with Fred Davis and James Winkfield.

The Philosophy of Childing
The Philosophy of Childing

Author: Christopher Phillips

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2016-05-17

Total Pages: 234

ISBN-13: 1510703284

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Weaving together philosophy, social science and neuroscience research, personal anecdotes and dialogues, The Philosophy of Childing takes a radically different approach to the traditional boundaries between childhood and adulthood to reveal how rather than lapse into adulthood, we can achieve what the Greeks arete—all-around excellence—when we look to children and youth as a lodestar for our development. Childhood is our primary launching pad, a time of life when learning is more intense than at any other, when we gain the critical knowledge and skills that can help ensure that we remain adaptable. This book weaves together the thinking of philosophers from across the ages who make the unsettling assertion that with the passage of time we are apt to shrink mentally, emotionally, and cognitively. If we follow what has become an all-too-common course, we denature our original nature—which brims with curiosity, empathy, reason, wonder, and a will to experiment and understand—and we regress, our sense of who we are will become fuzzier and everyone in our orbit will pay a price. Mounting evidence shows that we begin our lives with a moral, intellectual, and creative bang, and in this groundbreaking, heavily researched and highly engaging volume, Christopher Phillips makes the provocative case that childhood isn’t merely a state of becoming, while adulthood is one of being, as if we’ve “arrived” and reached the summit. His life-changing proposition is that if we embrace the defining qualities of youth, we’re not destined to become frail, dispirited, or unhinged, we’ll grow in a way defined by wonder, curiosity, imaginativeness, playfulness, and compassion—in essence, unlimited potential.

Everything Sad Is Untrue
Everything Sad Is Untrue

Author: Daniel Nayeri

Publisher: Chronicle Books

Published: 2020-08-25

Total Pages: 372

ISBN-13: 1646140028

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A National Indie Bestseller An NPR Best Book of the Year A New York Times Best Book of the Year An Amazon Best Book of the Year A Booklist Editors' Choice A BookPage Best Book of the Year A NECBA Windows & Mirrors Selection A Publishers Weekly Best Book of the Year A Wall Street Journal Best Book of the Year A Today.com Best of the Year PRAISE "A modern masterpiece." —The New York Times Book Review "Supple, sparkling and original." —The Wall Street Journal "Mesmerizing." —TODAY.com "This book could change the world." —BookPage "Like nothing else you've read or ever will read." —Linda Sue Park "It hooks you right from the opening line." —NPR SEVEN STARRED REVIEWS ★ "A modern epic." —Kirkus Reviews, starred review ★ "A rare treasure of a book." —Publishers Weekly, starred review ★ "A story that soars." —The Bulletin, starred review ★ "At once beautiful and painful." —School Library Journal, starred review ★ "Raises the literary bar in children's lit." —Booklist, starred review ★ "Poignant and powerful." —Foreword Reviews, starred review ★ "One of the most extraordinary books of the year." —BookPage, starred review A sprawling, evocative, and groundbreaking autobiographical novel told in the unforgettable and hilarious voice of a young Iranian refugee. It is a powerfully layered novel that poses the questions: Who owns the truth? Who speaks it? Who believes it? "A patchwork story is the shame of the refugee," Nayeri writes early in the novel. In an Oklahoman middle school, Khosrou (whom everyone calls Daniel) stands in front of a skeptical audience of classmates, telling the tales of his family's history, stretching back years, decades, and centuries. At the core is Daniel's story of how they became refugees—starting with his mother's vocal embrace of Christianity in a country that made such a thing a capital offense, and continuing through their midnight flight from the secret police, bribing their way onto a plane-to-anywhere. Anywhere becomes the sad, cement refugee camps of Italy, and then finally asylum in the U.S. Implementing a distinct literary style and challenging western narrative structures, Nayeri deftly weaves through stories of the long and beautiful history of his family in Iran, adding a richness of ancient tales and Persian folklore. Like Scheherazade of One Thousand and One Nights in a hostile classroom, Daniel spins a tale to save his own life: to stake his claim to the truth. EVERYTHING SAD IS UNTRUE (a true story) is a tale of heartbreak and resilience and urges readers to speak their truth and be heard.

Sag Harbor
Sag Harbor

Author: Colson Whitehead

Publisher: Vintage

Published: 2010-06-15

Total Pages: 354

ISBN-13: 0307455165

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NATIONAL BESTSELLER • PEN/FAULKNER AWARD FINALIST • From the two-time Pulitzer Prize-winning author of The Underground Railroad and The Nickel Boys: a hilarious and supremely original novel set in the Hamptons in the 1980s, "a tenderhearted coming-of-age story fused with a sharp look at the intersections of race and class” (The New York Times). Benji Cooper is one of the few Black students at an elite prep school in Manhattan. But every summer, Benji escapes to the Hamptons, to Sag Harbor, where a small community of Black professionals have built a world of their own. The summer of ’85 won’t be without its usual trials and tribulations, of course. There will be complicated new handshakes to fumble through and state-of-the-art profanity to master. Benji will be tested by contests big and small, by his misshapen haircut (which seems to have a will of its own), by the New Coke Tragedy, and by his secret Lite FM addiction. But maybe, just maybe, this summer might be one for the ages. Look for Colson Whitehead’s new novel, Crook Manifesto, coming soon!

Unconditional Parenting
Unconditional Parenting

Author: Alfie Kohn

Publisher: Simon and Schuster

Published: 2006-03-28

Total Pages: 272

ISBN-13: 0743487486

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The author of Punished by Rewards and The Schools Our Children Deserve returns with a provocative challenge to the conventional ways of raising children. Kohn argues that all children have the need to be loved unconditionally, yet conventional approaches to parenting, such as punishment and reward, teach children that they are loved only when they please and impress parents. Kohn cites powerful research detailing the damage this can cause. Unconditional Parenting pushes parents to question their ideas of parenting and offers practical solutions to problems.

The Missionary Position
The Missionary Position

Author: Christopher Hitchens

Publisher: Verso

Published: 1995

Total Pages: 132

ISBN-13: 9781859840542

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Recipient of the Nobel Peace Prize, feted by politicians, the Church and the world's media, Mother Teresa of Calcutta appears to be on the fast track to sainthood. But what, asks Christopher Hitchens, makes Mother Teresa so divine?

Pet
Pet

Author: Akwaeke Emezi

Publisher: Make Me a World

Published: 2019-09-10

Total Pages: 227

ISBN-13: 0525647090

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NATIONAL BOOK AWARD FINALIST • STONEWALL BOOK AWARD WINNER • ONE OF TIME MAGAZINE’S 100 BEST YA BOOKS OF ALL TIME NAMED ONE OF THE BEST BOOKS OF THE YEAR by The New York Times • Time • Buzzfeed • NPR • New York Public Library • Publishers Weekly • School Library Journal A genre-defying novel from the award-winning author NPR describes as “like [Madeline] L’Engle…glorious.” A singular book that explores themes of identity and justice. Pet is here to hunt a monster. Are you brave enough to look? There are no monsters anymore, or so the children in the city of Lucille are taught. Jam and her best friend, Redemption, have grown up with this lesson all their life. But when Jam meets Pet, a creature made of horns and colors and claws, who emerges from one of her mother's paintings and a drop of Jam's blood, she must reconsider what she's been told. Pet has come to hunt a monster, and the shadow of something grim lurks in Redemption's house. Jam must fight not only to protect her best friend, but also to uncover the truth, and the answer to the question--How do you save the world from monsters if no one will admit they exist? A riveting and timely young adult debut novel that asks difficult questions about what choices you can make when the society around you is in denial. "[A] beautiful, genre-expanding debut" –The New York Times "The word hype was invented to describe books like this." –Refinery29